Previous treatments for local bleeding comprise surgical and medical approaches. Among surgical approaches, local lesions can sometimes be treated by excision, cauterization, ligation or tamponation, but this applies only to restricted numbers and classes of lesions. Among medical approaches, the most common is the systemic administration of blood platelets and/or blood coagulation factors, of which the patient may have a congenital or acquired deficiency, and/or the systemic administration of inhibitors of fibrinolytic (clot-dissolving) mechanisms. The latter include tranexamic acid, which inhibits the conversion of plasminogen to the fibrinolytic enzyme plasmin, and aprotinin, which inactivates fibrinolytic enzymes. The disadvantage of these medical approaches is that their effect is often inadequate to arrest the local bleeding, especially if this is caused by a combination of one or more local lesions and a generalized deficiency of one or more hemostatic mechanisms or due to an affection of the capillary membrane either of primary, unknown etiology or secondary to an identifiable systemic disease or condition, such as bone marrow transplantation, chemotherapy, systemic autoimmune disease or infection. The inhibition of fibrinolysis can only arrest bleeding if the hemostatic mechanisms are adequate to form a blood clot in the first place.
Local bleeding is typically a medical emergency, in which rapid arrest of bleeding is required, often allowing insufficient time to identify the underlying causes with certainty, and in which treatment of the underlying disease is too retarded in comparison with the acute life-threatening hemorrhage. Medical treatments are therefore often given speculatively and without certainty of their efficacy in the individual patient, but with the intention of avoiding or delaying the need for a more radical surgical intervention to arrest the bleeding.